Taylor Swift’s “Trouble” Slowed Down by Jessie J

I don’t always love when an artist from another genre takes a country song and covers it. It usually ends up sounding less country than the original. And even if it’s good, it’s just not as good.

This Jessie J cover version, though? Totally different story. She is an English singer-songwriter (real name Jessica Cornish) with kind of a pop/rap/R&B sound, if that’s a thing. I really only knew of her from that amazing “Price Tag”
song. But now? After she did this mind-blowing thing with Taylor Swift‘s “I Knew You Were Trouble,”
I want to know everything about her and her music.

Last week, she turned it into more of a slow, quiet, mournful, haunting acoustic ballad
. It actually sounds a bit more country than Swift’s original version.

Jessie J did it for BBC Radio 1′s Live Lounge
with just a microphone and a sideman on guitar. She was there to promote her new album, Alive, which sadly does not actually include her version of the Swift hit. And then, of course, she tweeted about it, saying, “Here is my cover of @ taylorswift13 ‘I knew you were trouble’ for Radio1 live lounge! It’s had 83k views in 24 hours! Wow!”

I’m not sure if that’s the power of Twitter, the BBC, Swift’s 34 million followers, Jessie J’s own 6 million followers or a combination of them all. And, of course, a really, really cool song done in a very moving new way.